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Kevin Braddock

Kevin Braddock is our pick for this week’s Guest Poster, co-inciding with the release of the fourth issue of his self-published maagzine, manzine. In his own words, “Sure, it’s a confusing time for print media, but there is so much innovation and originality in print editorial and design today, and there will always be an appetite for strong content presented in an original way, which is what Manzine is all about.” His picks this week are all Manzine collaborators; you don’t have to be a man to work for his “Publication About The Male Phenomenon”, but it probably helps.

This whole assignment is flawed, or perhaps I am a flawed candidate for it, because there is nothing I can point to and call ugly. To cast something as ugly in the context of aesthetics or morals is to say it shouldn’t exist, that it’s disturbing to our sensibilities and ought to go away. But this ignores the fact that the term beauty would have no meaning without it.

I recently watched PJ Harvey making an album in a Perspex box in Somerset House; an event that offered me a tantalising glimpse at the artist’s process. I was in earshot of the pops, whizzes and bangs of creativity, dodging the sparks of ideas flying around the room. My face was lit by a thousand lightbulbs, my heart pounding at the thrill of being privy to these eureka moments. Of course, it was nothing like this at all. It was, for the most part, quite boring.

From films to free association, happenstance to historical revolutionaries, what’s really in a name? Graphic design studios across the world have all manner of weird and wonderful back stories for why they’re called what they’re called…

I see her a lot lately; at least once and often twice a day. Always in the same place – never anywhere else – at the supermarket near my house. Seeing her there so regularly makes me wonder if she lives inside. I picture her sleeping on toilet paper beds, stealing table wines and going for all-you-can-eat sprees at the deli after closing time. I keep noticing the way she dresses herself; everything she wears looks carefully chosen. Her beige-clad peers could learn a lot from her.

Never has a word with such positive intent had such inflammatory implications as “Nice” does in the context of the art world. There are other words that wield a disarming blow of mediocrity but Nice is the atom bomb of the bunch. It pours a boiling pot of scorn all over the artist’s work. But why is this? It is after all a compliment and a positive gesture.